


Skin-Gold

by Tawabids



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Battle Of Five Armies, But not really a fix-it, Dragon!Bilbo, Gore, M/M, slightly dysfunctional relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:45:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bilbo gives a little laugh. “I thought it was a… a story for children. ‘Don’t strike a good fellow in anger’, my mother used to say,” he clears his throat and steps closer to Thorin, “because those who die badly will return until they have taken their revenge. They will return as dragons, and dragons have keen eyes, and will always find you no matter where you hide."</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the end, dragons are more useful in a battle than hobbits - but you have to lose one to get the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin-Gold

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt at the kink meme](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/6263.html?thread=14609015#t14609015). This odd piece has been sitting around trying to get itself finished for seriously months now, but tonight I am drunk and I am writing and posting fanfic, so procrastination can suck it.

It is Thorin’s fault.

There is more blood than air. It is in Thorin’s beard, in his eyes, streaming from his nose. Pain tells him there’s an iron spear-tip buried above his hip, but he can’t sort out when or how it got there. He has split too many skulls and turned away too many swords to know which goblin got through his defences. He thinks it was the reason his nephews appeared at his side, both of them screaming, pushing back the horde as pain blossomed through Thorin and then faded with the berserker’s rush. 

He’s been separated from them now. He can see them against a crumbled segment of the gate wall. Fili lies with a shield across his chest. Thorin can’t tell if he’s alive. One eye is open, but motionless, and the other is caked shut by blood that covers half his face, matting his braids, bright red blood like the finest silks of Ered Luin. Kili stands over him, striking out wildly, his own shield clutched at a bad angle by an arm that is bruised at best and broken at worst. Thorin can see that he’s manic, his training and caution forgotten in his need to protect his brother. That wildness is what will kill him. Thorin has seen it happen to many others.

They will all die. There is no other fate now. Thorin shoves his shoulder into the gut of a tall orc, jams his sword into the creature’s foot and then wrenches the blade out and decapitates it, but its shield-partner cries out and launches itself on Thorin, swinging its mace down on him again and again. It has gone wild with blood, with grief. _Like Kili_ , Thorin thinks as he struggles to turn the blows aside. _Even among the foulest of enemies, nothing divides us from them once the battle begins. Only life and death._

And then the orc stops. Its mouth opens and black ichor pours out and it looks down at the torn wound in its chest. Its brows twist in confusion and it falls sideways, with the slick noise of a sword being pulled from its gut.

“Thorin!” comes a voice from the empty air. “Thorin, get up!”

He hadn’t realised until this moment that he was on one knee, his shield missing and his free hand clutched to the wound on his hip. He finds his voice and manages to croak out one dull word.

“Halfling?”

“Yes, you lump, get up! I can’t fight them all!”

Thorin hauls himself to his feet. He feels a small hand press at the armour over his ribs, but he isn’t sure if it’s for comfort or support. It tells him this is real, the hobbit is really here beside him. Bilbo’s invisible weight shifts, smearing footprints in the blood and mud, until they are back-to-back, and then there are more goblins coming and Thorin must stop thinking about the unreality of it and fight.

He swings his sword one, twice, three times, and hears Bilbo swear. “You almost took my head off!”

“I can’t see you, you stupid troll-blight,” Thorin roars back, and ends the life of the wounded goblin at his feet. “Take off your ring!”

“You think I forgot I was wearing it, O king of the mulish?” Bilbo’s voice replies. “It’s the only thing that kept me alive long enough to find you.”

“Take it off or get out of my way!” Thorin kicks an oncoming orc in its nethers and guts it when it crumples. Green-grey intestines pour over his feet and he staggers back. “Bilbo?”

“Here,” calls a figure in the corner of his eye, and he glances back to see the hobbit standing behind him, clutching his little sword in both hands. It glows blue like the afterimage of a flame in the darkness. Bilbo meets Thorin’s eyes and a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Happy now?”

“Not yet,” Thorin snaps and drives his sword through the next goblin. 

It goes on. Thorin has no idea how the battle fares outside of the gully where his dwarves are fighting. He cannot even find Kili as he sweeps his gaze around to slam the pommel of his sword into the next foe. Perhaps his nephews escaped to safety. Perhaps they lie in the filth, indistinguishable from the rest of the dead. Thorin knows only that the enemy are still coming, and that Bilbo is at his back.

And then—

—it is Thorin’s fault; he told him to take off the ring; he chained Bilbo’s life to his own onrushing doom—

—Bilbo yells, “Your left!” and Thorin turns. His sword is in the other hand and he can’t bring it around quick enough. But Bilbo is there, ducking under the goblin’s spear to jam his little sting into the enemy’s gut. The hobbit jerks back with a cry as the goblin falls, and looks towards Thorin with a dazed grin, probably to say, _saved you again_ , or perhaps simply, _we’re alive!_ And then the next goblin sprinting up behind him swings its mace in a clean, fine sweep, and crushes the side of Bilbo’s head in.

In that moment, Thorin knows the fragility of life better than he has ever understood it in all his long years.

As the hobbit falls, Thorin roars and brings his sword down on the goblin’s skull and cuts its face in two. But he might as well be a hundred years late for all the good it does. Bilbo lies over the curled corpse of a grey orc. His body convulses and his hands clench and then go slack. The little sword that had saved Thorin’s Company in Mirkwood – it has a name, but Thorin has suddenly forgotten it, forgotten everything – slides from his grip. His skull is concave and his gaze is already aimless. Gone; that irritable little sneer, that nervous chuckle, those wide eyes and gasping mouth at every new sight, the shameless, groping hands; the ever-silent tread; all gone with a split-second collision of cold iron and a thin shell of bone. 

Thorin turns to keep fighting. The edges of his vision are black and ragged. The smell of gore is too thick to breathe. The world is spinning. He becomes aware that there are bright edges to the landscape, like scales of beaten gold floating on the air. He thinks, distantly, _I am already dead, and my ancestors come to summon me_. But the gold has turned to rivulets in the air and they do not lead to Thorin.

He turns with some disinterest, not expecting that anything now could pull a sense of surprise or confusion from him. Bilbo is dead, his nephews are probably dead, and Thorin is ready and glad to join them. 

But it seems he still has some surprise in him still. The flakes of gold are tumbling through the air like the petals of an apple tree in a high wind. They clump together like droplets of oil floating on water and separate and stream onwards. They are leading to Bilbo’s body.

What is happening? The gold is so thick now that Thorin cannot see any inch of the hobbit’s skin. He realises that the goblins are falling back, some throwing down their shields or crying out in terror. So it is not some hallucination of his blood-sapped mind. Something is happening, something strange, something Thorin has no myth or reference for.

The world goes white. The light rushes in like lightning, blinding Thorin. He turns his face away, and feels a sunburn-sting on his skin. A force pushes at him, like the water of a slow-moving river, and he had to shove the point of his sword into the earth to keep upright. He can see the blood inside his own eyelids even when he covers his face with his arm. And then it fades. He can almost hear the light fading. He lowers his arm and cracks open his eyes.

Smaug rises before him. No! It’s impossible – the dragon is dead, the dragon must be dead, the Lake-Men had no reason to lie, and surely the beast would have returned to the mountain before now. But there is no doubt that Smaug looms over Thorin now, in scales of gold and silver, his underbelly pulsing an iridescent red and oily blue. The great worm is long and whip-like as a snake, his body almost two hundred feet from nose to tail-tip, his wings unfolding like the sails of the mightiest ship. The goblins and orc flee like ants beneath a boot, and a cry of pure terror flows outward across the battlefield.

Thorin falls to his knees, no longer able to feel his limbs, unable to even breathe under the gaze of the dragon. He can feel the heat pouring off Smaug’s body, even see the ripples in the air above him. Smaug bends his neck as his eyes meet Thorin’s and his head cranes forward to study him. He is so close that if Thorin were to take up his sword now, he might – if he was fast enough, which he isn’t, and brave enough to break a firedrake’s gaze, which nobody ever was – be just close enough to scratch Smaug’s nose with the end of his blade. His breath is like an oven just opened and when his front claws snake forward and seize hold of Thorin, they are as hot as stones snatched from a dying hearth. But they somehow miss Thorin’s bare arms, taking hold of him around the chest and legs, and his armour and layers of cloth protect him somewhat.

The sensation of being lifted off his feet by Smaug awakens Thorin. He closes his mouth and gasps for breath through his nose and constricted chest, his lungs choking but not failing in the burning, sulphurous air. The dragon’s face is closer now. Thorin can see every shining scale, can see deep into the orbs of the creature’s eyes. His sword is upright in the dirt below him, out of reach, but he has a hatchet strapped on his back. He does not know if Smaug intends to eat him or crush him or burn him with fire, but he might get one last insult in first. He reaches over his shoulder to take hold of the small axe.

Smaug’s huge eyes blink. His tail twists behind him, and then encircles a patch of earth below. One paw shifts and the long thumb of the dragon – as wide as Thorin’s arm below the should – rises from Thorin’s chest to touch his face. Thorin’s skin blisters almost instantly beneath the gentlest brush of the creature’s thumb. At once, he flinches away from the burning scales and then pulls the axe from its sheath and slams it into Smaug’s foreleg as hard as he can.

The blade dents the white-gold armour without piercing it, but Smaug draws his head back with a growl like an earthquake. His claws burst open and drop Thorin, who lands with a grunt in the steaming mud, jarring the speartip in his hip. He is fenced in by the circle of the dragon’s tail, and he struggles to stand, raising the axe again. Before he can strike, Smaug springs onto his hindquarters and then launches straight upwards. His tail whips away with him and Thorin is knocked onto his back by the wind from his wings. He lies there with his head resting on the leg of some dead goblin, watching the dragon shoot up towards the clouds. The pain in his hip and the ache in his muscles tells him he’s alive.

Alive. He looked a dragon in the eyes and lived. He foolishly tried to _axe_ a dragon and lived. It is beyond comprehension, and he is too drained to move for a moment.

 

###### 

 

Through the roar of his heartbeat, he hears someone yelling his name. Slowly he raises his head. The voice is wonderfully familiar, if laced with fear. Thorin blinks – his eyes feel boiled, his skin seared, the burn on his cheek stinging and throbbing – and sees a dark-headed figure a good thirty feet away. It is dwarf-sized, and he recognises Kili as his eyes refocus. Kili’s sword is sheathed and his shield missing, one arm held awkwardly against his body, blood and muck staining his face and clothes and turning him into a frayed ghost of a nephew. He’s scrambling across the now-empty battlefield towards Thorin.

Thorin sits up with the last of his energy just as Kili trips and manages to fall with some grace onto his knees beside his uncle. He grabs Thorin’s arm and swings it around his shoulders. “Stand up! Hurry, Thorin!”

He’s looking away from the mountain. Thorin is dragged, stumbling, to his feet. He snatches at his upright sword with his fingertips and manages to jerk it out of the mud. His swinging gaze searches for something – he realises he’s looking for Bilbo’s body, but he can’t find it. It must be close, it must be here, but there’s no sign of a hank of curly hair among the grey goblins, nor of the blue coat that the Lake-men gave to their hobbit. 

He doesn’t realise where they’re going until Kili helps him over the shattered ridge of stones that mark where Thorin’s dwarves built the wall around the gate. The remains of the platform block the sun, where only yesterday they had been keeping watch for elves and men, thinking they were the only enemies of note. The river rushes past on one side, pooling at the bottom of the wall and gushing over the broken foundations. 

“Watch there, watch the approach,” Kili tells him, with an exhausted note of authority that Thorin has never heard in his nephew before. He’s fallen to his knees beside a gold-haired figure lying in the shadows of the platform, pillowed by what looks like a bundle of goblin clothing. Fili is breathing in swift, shallow gasps, half his face still a solid mass of blood. He stares upwards at the heavy clouds as his brother rips a strip of linen from his own shirt with one hand and his teeth – the other arm is definitely broken, Thorin thinks, or he wouldn’t hold it so close. Kili folds the cloth and presses it to the wound in Fili’s head.

“Can you hold it?” Kili asks, and when his brother only grunts in pain he picks up Fili’s hand and presses that to the wound, too. “Hold it, idiot!” his head snaps up. “Thorin?”

“I’m here,” Thorin says. 

“I told you to keep watch,” Kili replies without a trace of demureness. He’s lost something in the hours since they last spoke. He’s not seeing Thorin as a glorious hero or a beloved uncle right now, just another warrior whose aid he needs.

Thorin looks out through the crumbled gap in the wall and realises that the battle is still raging. It seems like madness, that any quarrel could still matter now. Why are they fighting for a prize that is no longer on the table? Their enemy is not standing on the ground, it is scaly and flying and unbeatable. Unless it’s Thorin who has gone mad. He looks over at Kili, who is binding the padding in place with more strips of cloth. 

“Did you see it?” Thorin asks.

Kili glances over at him. “Did I see what?”

“The dragon, Kili! Did you see Smaug? Alive!” Thorin’s voice rises to a rebuke, as if his nephew had missed a rune in his writing lessons. 

“Yes, yes, I saw him,” Kili turns back to the knot of the bandage, which he cannot pull tight with only one hand. “The dragon. He flew away. What does it matter unless he comes back?”

Thorin shakes his head and wraps both hands around his sword. The fighting has moved on from the gate, and there are no goblins nearby their little shelter. Thorin still can’t tell which side has the upper hand, but there is a lot of black armour out there in the valley. 

And then Fili’s voice whispers. “It wasn’t Smaug.”

Thorin looks over at his heir. Fili swallows, squeezing his eye closed for a moment and then focusing on Thorin’s face. He hisses as Kili leans down to bite one end of the knot in his teeth and finally tighten it across his brother’s brow. Kili’s hair falls across Fili’s face, sticking to the congealing smears of Fili’s blood.

“What do you mean?” Thorin rumbles.

Fili shakes his head slowly. The bandage stays in place and a faint smile of pride twitches on Kili’s mouth. 

Then Fili says in a voice as faint as the breeze, “It wasn’t Smaug. I could see… inside it. It was… Bilbo.”

Kili looks at Thorin. His skin is ashen and his mouth is a grim line. “He’s delirious,” he mutters.

“I know what I saw,” Fili whispers, closing his eye. 

They have no chance to argue further. With a hum that becomes the roar of the fiercest furnace, the dragon returns. The clouds boil and part before him, and glow with his fire. Thorin watches the worm drop like a stone from the sky and tightens his grip on his sword. They are standing on the front doorstep of Smaug’s warren, but Fili cannot be moved, Kili will not leave him, and Thorin will not flee to save his own skin. 

But the dragon is not coming for them. It plunges down towards where the battle is thickest, so far down the valley that it looks like nothing but a rope of writhing gold. Flames billow yellow and blue from its jaws, incinerating great swathes of the armies in moment. The longer Thorin watches, the clearer it becomes that the dragon’s fire is directed only at the reserve flanks of the goblins and wolves, never at Dain’s people, nor the Mirkwood forces, nor the men of the lake. He lets his sword hang by his side as he watches.

The dragon is turning the tide of the battle. The goblins and orcs are routed. Within minutes their enemies are scattered and running for their lives. The elves’ best archers run forward, directing their arrows not at the goblins but at the dragon, trying to drive him away from their flanks. Smaug writhes and rises out of their range, but appears unhurt. If there really is a bare patch on his belly, none of the keen-eyed elves seem to have hit it. 

But maybe that was a lie by the treacherous Bard, just as he lied about seeing Smaug’s death in the first place. More likely he injured the dragon and saw him crawl off to nurse his wounds, assuming him dead and inventing a story about how his bones lay under the water of the lake, where conveniently none could see them. Everything confirms Thorin’s fears and paranoias; Thranduil was no doubt in on the ruse, and Gandalf too. They had lied to him and cut him off from any chance of allegiance against the dragon, their common foe. They had wanted to erase his rightful claim to Erebor, they had seen him only as bait to lure Smaug out, they had hoped the dragon would kill him and then they could split the spoils. They had even planted the halfling in the midst of his Company to seduce him and betray him—

But then, why had Bilbo come back? 

Why had he returned to fight beside Thorin?

Why did he die beside him?

The dragon has been circling above the battlefield, but now Thorin sees that its trajectory is changing. Smaug is turning towards where he stands, with the mountain behind him. He takes a step backwards, raising his sword. The spear-tip bites into his hip. He turns towards his nephews.

“The river!” he jabs his sword towards the swirling pool sinking under the wall. “Kili, get your brother, get under the water!”

But the dragon is coming too fast. Fili gives a haggard cry as Kili tries to pull him to his feet. There is no time. Thorin stumbles back towards them, his injured side giving way, kneels over Fili and pulls Kili under his body. He looks up just as the white-gold worm fills the sky above him. Its wingbeats are deafening and the temperature of the air becomes briefly unbearable, and then it is gone as quickly as it came. The wind dies down and cool air rushes in. Thorin slowly stands, squeezing Kili’s shoulder.

“Where did it go?” Kili asks, looking around as if he expects Smaug to be peeking out from behind the nearest pile of rubble.

“Into the mountain,” Thorin replies. 

Before long, they are joined by other dwarves, both members of Thorin’s company and some of Dain’s warriors come looking for survivors. The battle is over, they say, but there is a tense dispute between the leaders of the three armies about whether to evacuate the area immediately, under the threat that the dragon will return, or wait until all the wounded have been found and tended to until they are fit to travel. According to Dori, who has been with Balin at a haphazard meeting mere minutes after the dragon had returned to the mountain, Dain wants to go one step further and gather the dead as well. He pushed for the burning of the bodies at Azanzulbizar, and has seen the lasting pain that the improper burials caused the kin of the dwarves who died there. 

“You have to come down,” Dori begs, as Dwalin put his arm around Thorin to support his weight. “They think for sure you’re dead. You have to help them make the decision.”

Thorin shakes his head. “I can do more good here.”

“What do you mean?” Dori winces, looking up at the barren slopes and the gaping front door of Erebor. “There’s nothing here.”

A stretcher is already being lashed together to carry Fili down the valley to the healing tents, but Thorin refuses to go with them. He orders Oin to take the spear out right there beneath the shadow of the mountain and bandage his wound tightly. Kili and Dwalin have fashioned a crutch out of one of the platform buttresses, but every step is still slow going.

“I’m coming with you, you mad old dwarf,” Dwalin says. “At least for a little way.”

“I’m coming too,” Kili stands up.

“No, you take care of your brother,” Thorin points down the valley. “All of you, go back and tell them not to risk moving the wounded yet. I am going to find the dragon.”

“You’ll only anger the beast further!” one of Dain’s warriors cries. “It will return and destroy every living thing within a hundred miles!”

“Then why did it spare us?” Thorin snarls. “Smaug hates the smell of dwarves, and has eyes sharper than the strongest eagle. Why didn’t he burn every last one of us into cinders?” he sucks in a breath. The brand on his cheek stings like a betrayal. “I will go in, I will learn what I can, and either die there or return to tell you what I found.”

There is protest from Dain’s dwarves, who think the risk of Smaug’s wrath is too great, and from his own dwarves, who think he is going to get himself well and truly killed. Thorin shouts them all down and repeats the order for them to leave. Then he grips Dwalin’s shoulders and turns toward the front gate of Erebor.

It is the right place for him to die – but he hopes, all the same, that it won’t come to that.

The smell of sulphur and ashes linger in the front hall as they make their way into the shelter of the mountain. Thorin is ungainly even with Dwalin hanging onto his armour, and the scrape of his boots sound as loud as drumbeats to his ears. Pushed into the far corners are familiar bedrolls and packs spilling clothes and snatched trinkets from the treasure vaults. Bofur’s bag has a silver flute sticking out of it, and Gimli’s patch is laid with fine jewellery for his wife. There in the corner even lies Ori’s sketchbook, carried through every adventure, even rescued in the Misty Mountains, scrutinised and returned by the elves during their imprisonment, sodden in the barrels and dried page-by-page on the washing lines of Lake-Town. It seems like such a foolish waste to lose it now. But Dori said that while Ori is currently helping Balin, their middle brother has not yet been accounted for, and Thorin supposes that is the youngster’s first concern right now. 

Thorin makes Dwalin stop as they reach the junction beyond the inner atrium. Two of the great doors are nothing but long-broken rust cast down many decades ago, but the east door was intact when Thorin was here two nights ago. It leads only to dormitories and guard-rooms above the front gate, and without any reserve of gold Smaug had not bothered to break it during his long years of undisturbed occupancy. The dwarves had wedged it open a little and raided it for weapons only a few nights ago, but now the corroded hinges have been wrenched from their sockets and the doors are twisted and smashed against the walls. 

“Leave me here,” Thorin pushes Dwalin away.

“I’m not running off with my beard flapping over my shoulder,” Dwalin growls.

“Then hide yourself until I return,” Thorin says. “I ask you as your king.”

He grips Dwalin’s hand and then releases him, refusing to meet his eye as he limps towards the dark stairway. He feels a faint breeze on his face as he steps past the broken doors. It smells of copper and coal. 

He makes his way up the stairs until he reaches a landing from which many doors branch. They are all intact or have rusted open long ago. He knows where he’s going as he drags his bad leg over the stones. The little room around the corner at the end is where the master of the armoury once slept, in the golden age of Erebor. That is his destination. That is where he will find the dragon. He unbuckles his armour as he goes, throwing down his breastplate and braces, shaking off his gauntlets one by one. It is much easier to move without all that weight.

The door around the corner is dusty wood, and half-open. A glow lights his way and makes him blink until his eyes readjust. He slips through the gap and steps onto the moth-eaten rug beyond. 

The dragon is knotted and coiled inside the room, which is tiny by Erebor’s standards, barely half the size of Beorn’s dining hall. The beast’s wings are folded as tight as possible and it has stacked its coils right up to the ceiling in some places, and still there should not be enough room. It has shrunk in size since Thorin faced it outside on the battlefield. Such shape-changing is not a talent of any dragon that Thorin has ever heard of. But this is not a true dragon.

He’s knows that now. 

The creature lies with its head buried beside the stone pallet where the master of the armoury once slept. Its paws are tucked against its muzzle like a sleeping dog, and the tip of its nose is buried in the folds of a rough Lake-Town blanket. Thorin himself carried the blanket here, a few nights ago, laid it on the pallet, and lit a candle in the bracket above, though both bracket and the stub of the candle have been knocked to the floor now. Here he induced Bilbo to follow him, with a dark glance at the hobbit after a sparse dinner with their companions. Here on the blanket he kissed that strange, smooth face, here he thanked the halfling for all he had done. Not for the first time – there was an almost chaste pawing in Beorn’s house, and more than that through the bars of the elf king’s prison, and once more on a shadowed eave overlooking the Long Lake – but it was the first time it had been truly premeditated. Thorin might have brushed the other trysts aside as momentary lust or madness, a king’s due perhaps, and Bilbo might have indulged his denial as happily as he obliged their brief unions. But not in this room. Not this time. 

The very next night, Bilbo took the Arkenstone to Thorin’s enemies and showed his true colours. 

Here the dragon has come to hide. Here he lies, curled uncomfortably into knots, with his eyes closed and his teeth hidden behind his lips. Here the truth comes out at last. 

Thorin taps his crutch on the stone and the dragon opens one red-gold eye. There are solar flames whirling inside that eye, but it does not open fully. It regards Thorin without a twitch of its claws, huffing a volcanic breath out its nose that ripples the blanket. 

“Can you speak?” Thorin rumbles, when he is finally satisfied that the dragon is not going to eat him at once. He clears his throat, “ _Will_ you speak?”

The dragon closes its eyes and turns its face towards the wall, folding its claws under its chin. Perhaps he’s simply seeing what he wants to see, but in that moment it looks unmistakeably like the manners of a certain obstinate hobbit giving Thorin the cold shoulder.

Thorin limps across the room. The heat of the dragon is intense throughout the chamber, but from a few feet away it is like standing in front of an inferno. Thorin lowers himself slowly to sit on the rug with his legs folded. He cocks his head to one side. “Can’t you make yourself any smaller? I shan’t survive much longer in this heat. I’m melting inside this armour.”

The dragon cracks one eye open again and raises its head from its paws. It blows a puff of air at Thorin’s face and he has to turn his head away. A hacking cough rises deep in his chest, and the wound in his hip throbs. When he looks back, the dragon’s face is even closer, turned to the side so that one eye fills Thorin’s focus, staring into him. It fills him with hypnotic dread, turning his limbs as weak as grass, and he does not think he could find the heart to turn and run even if he wanted to. He wonders how he possibly sent Bilbo down that tunnel to face Smaug alone, and indeed how the hobbit came back alive. 

The dragon doesn’t blink, but Thorin’s strength slowly returns. He raises one hand slowly, reaching for its muzzle, and it does not draw back from him. His bare palm becomes uncomfortable even within a few inches of the dragon’s scales.

“I can’t touch you,” Thorin tells it. “Give me a sign you understand, at least.”

The dragon draws its head back and shivers. The shudder runs from its horns all the way along its length to its tail, and then it begins to shake in earnest, as if trying to dry itself. Its scales peel off, white light bursts through the cracks in its skin, and there is a hiss that fills Thorin’s ears. When he blinks, the light has gone out and there is only the stinging after-images on his eyes. He fumbles on the ground where he saw the stub of the candle and the bracket, and strikes the tinder there until the wick lights. Slowly the shape of the room comes back into sight as he adjusts to the darkness. The dragon is gone, completely vanished, and tucked into the corner between the foot of the pallet and the wall is a pale-skinned hobbit with no clothes on.

Thorin sucks in a sharp breath. Bilbo’s face is buried in his hands. His skin still has a golden sheen on it, as if lit by something other than the yellow candle. Thorin rises and limps towards him, shaking his head. For a moment he cannot bear to touch Bilbo, any more than he would wipe his feet on a sacred tomb, but the hobbit is balled up in what looks like fear or pain and Thorin won’t leave him without comfort. He kneels on the baked stone, puts his hand on Bilbo’s shoulder and feels, not soft flesh, but dry scales like a snake and a heat that is bearable yet far stronger than it should be.

“Bilbo?” Thorin whispers. “Are you alright?”

It’s a stupid question, but he hasn’t any others prepared for a situation like this. He reaches back to where the rough blanket lies abandoned and tugs it close, draping it around Bilbo’s shoulders and pinching it closed in front. As he does so, the hobbit finally raises his head. His face is just as Thorin remembers it, round and scowling, but the pupils of his eyes are flecked with red and gold where there should be only a dark grey. 

He meets Thorin’s gaze, looking more exasperated than frightened. “Gracious, Thorin, you’re covered in blood! Are _you_ alright?”

Thorin finds his throat has closed over and he has to swallow before he can answer. “I’ll survive.”

“What happened to me?” Bilbo frowns, and touches the side of his head as if there is a ghost of pain there. “I feel… like myself all of a sudden.”

“You died,” Thorin says. “I’m sorry.”

“Why, did you kill me?”

“Of course not!”

“Then don’t mumble apologies like a prig,” Bilbo scolds. He stares at the backs of his hands, picking at his skin. A scale comes off, thin as a beetle’s wing, and disintegrates into dust motes. “Well… well, well, well…” his eyes widen. “Thorin, my dear, I don’t think I was myself at all, was I?”

“But you’re back. You’re alive now,” Thorin cannot contain himself a moment longer; he wraps his arms around Bilbo and pulls him in close, feeling the heat flow off him like he was something delicious straight out of the oven. He presses kisses along the side of Bilbo’s neck and up his jaw, his lips against the snakeskin and the heat, but underneath that is the familiar smell of hobbit skin. He’ll shed these scales. Beneath them he is whole and hale.

“Wait, wait,” Bilbo’s fingers tighten in his hair and pull him back. His brow is wrinkled and his eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be angry at me.”

“I’m not angry,” Thorin says at once.

“You were. You wanted to throw me off the wall!” Bilbo says, in a high pitch that suggests this was a shocking breach of Shire etiquette. 

Thorin shakes his head, “I forgive you.” 

“You— you forgive me!” Bilbo shoves him back, grasping the stone pallet and hauling himself to his feet, gripping the blanket around his shoulders. He stumbles around the edge of the room, one hand on the wall. “He forgives _me_. Yes, yes, I like that. I try to force a little sense into him, save him from his own stupidity, but the whole mess is the hobbit’s fault, as always.”

It feels like they’ve had this conversation before, several times. Thorin digs his crutch into the rug and heaves himself to his feet. “I think there’s a rather larger issue at hand, here. You were… I think you were… a great, romping dragon, Mr Baggins! I would like to know how that happened.”

Bilbo has stopped turned away from Thorin, standing in front of the waning candle. It is now little more than a scratch of wick in a simmering pool of wax. He stretches his hand over it, his palm almost brushing the flame, but makes no sign that it hurts him. “I do wish I could have seen myself,” he says, very softly, and gives a self-conscious laugh. “What a sight.”

“It was not very pleasant from my perspective,” Thorin grumbles.

“Nor to those people I burned,” Bilbo says. Thorin can just see his profile, illuminated by the dying candle. “I could see them in turn. Very clearly, as they died. Dragons have keen eyes.”

Thorin shakes his head. “It was a battle. You saved many lives.”

“Can you forgive me that, too?”

“I do,” Thorin shrugs. “Whether I can or not. Now, will you tell me – do you know how it happened? Was it… some magic of Gandalf’s, did he plan this all along?”

Bilbo turns to look at him at last. He gives a little laugh. “Perhaps he did. Not with my knowledge, though, and probably not with his magic. I thought it was a… a story for children. ‘Don’t strike a good fellow in anger’, my mother used to say,” he clears his throat and steps closer to Thorin, “because those who die badly will return until they have taken their revenge,” he is very close, now, and he raises one arm from his makeshift cloak to touch Thorin’s face. His skin has almost returned to its normal texture and temperature. “They will return as dragons, and dragons have keen eyes, and will always find you no matter where you hide. Did I do this?” he rubs his thumb over the burn on Thorin’s cheek. Thorin nods.

“I wish I had been more careful with you,” Bilbo’s hand slides around the back of Thorin’s neck, digging into his sweat-soaked hair. He pulls Thorin down, and presses a kiss to the burn. It’s very gentle, but still it stings, and then Bilbo shifts and kisses his mouth and he forgets the pain at once.

His skin is truly hobbit-skin now, growing cool in the chilled cavern beneath a mountain. Thorin’s breath catches as he wraps his arms around him and holds him close, trying to fuse chest to chest. Bilbo pulls away first, and stumbles as he does so, his splayed hand pressed to his heart.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m better than alright,” Bilbo waves him off. “I’m forgiven.”

“I shouldn’t have said that—”

“I’m glad it was said. And before you ask, I forgive you too,” Bilbo sits down on the pallet, clutching the blanket around his shoulders. A shiver runs through him. “For everything and anything you fear. Ugh, I feel like a new-born calf, all wobbly and soggy and ready to fall on my face. I saw a calf being born once, you know.”

“You did not,” Thorin laughs in disbelief, given how often Bilbo complains about filth and is surprised by the stench and habits of animals. 

“No, I didn’t, but I’ve read about it in books,” Bilbo grins back at him. “What are you going to do now, O King under the Mountain?”

The realisation floods through Thorin. The battle is won, but enemies still stand at his gate. He must extend their alliance until he has full control of Erebor. A scowl tugs him out of his mirth. “I will go out and tell the others not to be afraid of the dragon. They want to evacuate the valley, but it’s too early to do so. Here, I’ll carry you.”

“No, no, I can’t go out yet, I’ve got not a stitch on me,” Bilbo slides his wrist away when Thorin reaches for it. “Go out and tell them whatever you have to. Send someone back with clothes as soon as you can, I’m freezing.”

Thorin cannot keep his hand away. He cups the hobbit’s jaw, runs his fingers around the shell of his ear, knuckles brushing in the soft curls, and then he turns to go.

“Thorin?”

When he looks back, he can barely see Bilbo’s face. The candle is so weak now, it illuminates only the faintest shapes in the darkness. He hears Bilbo swallow. “If you see Gandalf—”

“You want me to knock him over on your behalf, for dragging you into all this?” Thorin asks.

“Yes, please. Only the opposite of all of that. Go, hurry up now, it’ll be pitch black here in a moment.”

The candle is flickering and sputtering. Thorin leaves him. He limps along the corridor, taking the stairs too quickly and nearly missing a step and going head-over-heels. He makes it into the junction and finds Dwalin in the atrium beyond, not hiding very well at all. Dwalin gives a cry at the sight of him and runs to him, more like a child whose father has come home from war than the battle-scarred warrior Thorin has so long admired. 

“I’m fine, Dwalin, truly,” Thorin has to push him away.

“You didn’t find the beast, then?”

“I found him,” Thorin nods. “He’s not a beast. He’s a skinchanger, like Beorn. He’s our hobbit.”

Dwalin cannot find words for a moment, and finally splutters out. “Mr Baggins! Mr Baggins is _magic_?”

“Like nothing I have ever seen before,” Thorin nods. “I would not believe it, but he shifted back before my very eyes. And you must have seen how the dragon helped us win the battle.”

He expects Dwalin to deny it, or despair because Thorin is losing his mind, but instead Dwalin’s cheeks turn red and he bursts out, “Useless little halfling! Couldn’t he have told us this before now? We could have used a dragon plenty of times!” 

Thorin rubs the bridge of his nose and manages to stifle a laugh. “I don’t think it works like that. He didn’t know it was possible until it was possible.”

“Hmph. I’m sure that’s what he told you,” Dwalin scowls. “Where is the little blighter?”

“He’s in the room of the armoury master,” Thorin points back the way he’s come. “But he has no clothes, nor a candle to light his way. I must go down the valley and tell Dain and the rest of the rabble that the dragon is no danger to them. Will you find Mr Baggins’ pack and bring him whatever he needs? Tell him I’ll return soon. And bring him out into the sunshine if you can – I think it will do him good.”

He leaves Dwalin in the front hall, his old friend muttering about how he isn’t the valet of halflings. Thorin limps out of Erebor into a grey afternoon light. The smell of the dead oozes in the air and distantly he can hear elvish trumpets, perhaps making some tempered declaration of victory, perhaps mourning the dead; all elvish music sounds the same to Thorin. Oin and all but one of Dain’s dwarves have left the ruined wall outside the gate, but Dori, Bofur and Bifur rush to greet him, apparently having ignored his orders to leave the mountain well enough alone. They are so surprised to see him alive that it takes a while to get a word in edgeways, and even longer to assure them that he found what he was looking for and did not merely flee at the first whiff of sulphur. His head is reeling and his hip is beginning to seize up from the pain, but between the five of them he manages to walk with what he hopes is some semblance of dignity across the battlefield.

There is much more that needs to be done. Over the next hour he holds himself together by threads as thin as spiderwebs, by willpower and gritted teeth. The leaders of the armies are gathered at the edge of the healing tents. Only Dain is pleased to see him alive, and Gandalf too – the old wizard is lurking at the edges, not quite acting like he’s in charge but no doubt getting his way anyway – but Bard and the Elf King are still eager to hear what he has to say. They all want him bundled up and sent to rest with the wounded, but he knows that is their way of cutting him out of the committee and he refuses to budge.

“I must tell you what I have seen,” he says, his fists balled on his thighs but his back straight as he sits on an elven footstool that Bofur has procured for him, the closest thing he could find to a chair. “I must tell you about the dragon.”

It turns out that the generally agreed assumption has been that Smaug was as dead as Bard claimed, but that the second dragon was some spawn of his, bred and hidden in the mountain until its fathers’ demise. The hostility to the truth is as rancorous as Thorin expects, but to his surprise it is Bard who rallies to his side first. 

“None of you saw Smaug as closely as I did. The dragon we saw today was not like Smaug,” the man insists. “Not in shape nor conduct. He was something else entirely, and Thorin has nothing to gain from such an odd story.”

Gandalf adds his support next, and soon Thranduil and Dain are forced to agree that if the dragon wanted them all dead, he would have done it by now.

There is nothing else for it but to go up to the mountain and see for themselves. Thorin does not like the idea of letting a mismatched bunch of recent enemies traipse through his halls and throw open every chamber to prove there is nothing dangerous within the mountain. He is glad that most of the gathered bunch will not go anywhere near the mountain, still unconvinced that the strength of the evidence is worth their lives. Thorin prefers Dain and Balin to stay and keep dwarvish voices loud in the haphazard council, so in the end it is Bard, Gandalf, three young and boisterous elves, Bofur, Bifur (Dori has gone to search for his brother) and a handful of dwarves from the Iron Hills who agree to come back to the gate with him. He is almost unable to stand, but Balin pushes a proper wooden walking stick, gleaned from who-knows-where, into his hand, and slowly he leads them back through the mud and the corpses, back to the mountain.

He can walk through any flood and any pain, as far as he has to, knowing what’s waiting there. His home, his grandfather’s riches, his birthright, and something else as well. He hasn’t a name for it, but he covets it as fiercely as the gold and the kingship. He will not cast it out of his heart again.

The journey takes twice as long to return as Thorin did coming down the valley, but he refuses Bofur’s arm when it’s offered. The sun is low when they finally climb over the broken wall and pass through the front door of Erebor. 

Even a few steps across the threshold, the stench of the battlefield subsides. A cool breeze pulls at their clothes, tugging them insistently in, as if the mountain itself were drawing breath. Their footsteps echo in the front hall. Thorin had hoped that Bilbo would meet them outside in the fading sunshine, but then again, perhaps he went back in to get away from the smell.

“Dwalin?” Thorin calls into the echoing chambers.

“Here, Thorin.”

Dwalin’s voice rings across the hall. The little group starts and their faces all turn towards him. He is sitting on his heels away down the front door, as if he is the vigil at a wake. Thorin breaks into a limping run with Bard and Bofur on either side of him. 

"I'm sorry," Dwalin raises his head from the bundle in his lap, wrapped in two cloaks – his own, overtop of Thorin's, covering the body in his arms entirely. And it is a body, that much is clear even from this distance. A small body, smaller than a dwarf but still rather round in the middle. "I'm sorry, Thorin, I don't understand..."

"What did you do?" Thorin bellows, breaking away from his retinue and half-falling to his knees in front of Dwalin. "This can't be— what _happened_ —”

Despite Dwalin's protests, Thorin tears at the head of the bundle until the folds of the cloak fall away from Bilbo's face. The hobbit’s eyes are closed, his lips bloodless. There is a little frown making lines between his eyes, the same irritated look he gave all the dwarves whenever they were doing something particularly dwarf-life. Thorin groans deep in his chest, seizing Bilbo's head in both his hands, trying to rouse him, wishing he knew how to be gentle. Bilbo's ears are cold as the roots of Erebor and his hair is soft against Thorin’s calloused palms. There is no breath flaring his nostrils, no pulse beating sluggishly in his neck.

"I lit a candle, I took his pack and I went to the room, like you said," Dwalin rasps. "But he was already dead, Thorin. His body was cold. He'd been dead for an hour or more, I swear it."

A spasm clenches his chest. He shakes his head. "I told you to go to him at once!"

"I did," Dwalin pleads. "It was only a few minutes since you left me."

Thorin looks at him at last. The others, dwarves, elves and men, have gathered around them in silence, except for Bofur who is muttering curses to himself. Dwalin's face is grief-stricken, as Thorin has not seen him for a very long time. He has no reason to make up such a strange lie. He is holding Bilbo's body with open care, not defensive like someone trying to cover up his own negligence. 

"It's not possible," Thorin growls. "I spoke to him, right before I saw you. I saw the dragon transform into our burglar, before my very eyes, he was whole and alive!"

"He's not whole now," Dwalin says heavily. He carefully tugs back the rest of the cloak. Bilbo's skull is concave on one side, his hair matted with thick, dried blood and grey-white glimpses of exposed brain. Thorin flinches away, feeling bile rise in his throat. 

Dead.

He has been dead all along. Thorin touched him, kissed him, but he had never been alive. Just clinging on for one final magic trick. One goodbye, one last treasure to steal.

"No," Thorin's body shakes. He bends forward over Bilbo's body to press his forehead against Dwalin's shoulder, and grips him tight with one arm. "No, no, no."

The dragon is dead. Erebor is won.

 

###### 

 

Thorin rests in Dain’s tent. He’s been given a secluded corner, with some comforts and totems of gold and silver, transferred hastily from Erebor. He must take up the mantle of the king at once, he must show that he is already wearing the power and wealth of his grandfather. There will be more battles for the throne – courtly battles mostly, conspiracies and challenges from rivals – but he may prevent bloodshed if he shows no doubt in his own leadership. 

Dain’s attendants had also prepared a bed for him, but he’s given it to Fili, who is sleeping fitfully through his pain. His wounds aren’t dire, but Thorin would rather he was here than arrayed with the myriad other wounded in the healing tents. Kili has come and gone over the long hours of the night, keeping busy with the care and feeding of the army. There are plenty of jobs for a body who can still walk on both feet, even one with a broken arm who has been awake for almost two days and swinging a sword for a third of that. Thorin is not the sort to tell him to get some sleep. It’s good for him to serve his fellows and to learn his limits. 

Thorin dozes on the spare pillows and closes his eyes to the uneven rhythm of Fili’s breathing. When he wakes, Kili is sitting by the bed, his thumb running over the back of his brother’s hand, over and over with a look of steady concentration like he was sharpening his sword. 

“How is he?” Thorin asks quietly, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Kili doesn’t reply and his eyes don’t leave his brother’s face. 

The thrill of battle has faded and his hip hurts, much worse than he remembers the other wounds of older battles hurting. Suddenly the thought of kingship exhausts him. After all he’s done, he feels like he deserves an easier job than balancing the fate of the greatest dwarf nation no longer in existence. 

“We’re all accounted for,” Kili says suddenly. “They found Nori. Couple of hours ago. He fell in with some Lake-Men, rallied them to hold back a goblin wedge around the West cliffs. They’re calling him the hero of the hour.”

“That’s good,” Thorin says, his hand hovering over the bandages wrapped tight around his waist and leg. He wants to massage the pain away, but he knows that will only make it worse, will send sharp needles into his flesh like fingers of lightning. 

“I didn’t think he had it in him,” Kili says.

“Well, it runs in the family,” Thorin shrugs. “Dori doesn’t look it, but he had the makings of a general when he was young.”

“No, I meant Bilbo,” Kili looks up at last. There are shadows under his eyes and a hoarse scrape in his voice. “Joining the battle like that. I’d never have called him a coward, but I’d not have guessed…”

Thorin turns his face away, staring into the shadows of the tent, at the glinting silver chalice that some well-meaning fellow has placed here to remind him of all he’s gained. 

His fists ball around the sleeves of his shirt, nails digging through into his arms beneath. He feels a swell of hate, of rage without direction. Two dragons writhe inside him and gush fire into his blood, and one is an old memory from his childhood, for he had not even seen Smaug this time around, and one has left a stinging scar on his cheek. Bilbo died a foolish, worthless death because Thorin told him to take off his ring. Bilbo deserved it for taking the Arkenstone from the depths of the mountain and giving it to the enemy. Bilbo reached between Thorin’s ribs and tied knots in the vessels to his heart and slipped away with precious bones and organs. What other explanation is there for this pain? Thorin would do anything to get those pieces back, to be whole again. But when he bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut he can’t feel scars or holes or empty cavities in his chest and he knows it isn’t something Bilbo _took_ that he’s missing, it is something Bilbo _was_. 

“He knew it was coming,” he snarls into the shadows as if to drive back some beast. “He knew he only had the briefest reprise, and he took his chance to make peace. Why didn’t he give me mine, curse him! Why didn’t he let me say my farewell!”

When he looks back at Kili, his nephew gives a shrug. “You know him, Thorin. He didn’t like to make a fuss.”


End file.
